Human recombinant ribosomal protein S26 (rpS26) was shown to interact with its pre-mRNA intron I and mRNA fragment. Endogenous rpS26 in HeLa nuclear extract was also found to bind to the intron I, and with a lower extent to the mRNA fragment. The addition of recombinant rpS26 to the nuclear extract increased the binding largely. The in vitro splicing of an RNA that contained exon I, intron I and part of exon II of the rpS26 pre-mRNA yielded conventional and alternative mRNAs. Recombinant rpS26 was found to suppress the formation of both mRNAs. Sites of the pre-mRNA involved in the binding to rpS26 were detected by toe-printing. Nucleotides that caused a stop (pause) of the reverse transcription formed two clusters on the RNA secondary structure. One cluster including A69, A287 and A303 arranged the conventional 3' site of splicing, another one including A131, A136, G156, A166 and A264 arranged the alternative 3' site of splicing.

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) determine RNA fate from synthesis to decay. Employing two complementary protocols for covalent UV crosslinking of RBPs to RNA, we describe a systematic, unbiased, and comprehensive approach, termed "interactome capture," to define the mRNA interactome of proliferating human HeLa cells. We identify 860 proteins that qualify as RBPs by biochemical and statistical criteria, adding more than 300 RBPs to those previously known and shedding light on RBPs in disease, RNA-binding enzymes of intermediary metabolism, RNA-binding kinases, and RNA-binding architectures. Unexpectedly, we find that many proteins of the HeLa mRNA interactome are highly intrinsically disordered and enriched in short repetitive amino acid motifs. Interactome capture is broadly applicable to study mRNA interactome composition and dynamics in varied biological settings.

Protein-RNA interactions are fundamental to core biological processes, such as mRNA splicing, localization, degradation, and translation. We developed a photoreactive nucleotide-enhanced UV crosslinking and oligo(dT) purification approach to identify the mRNA-bound proteome using quantitative proteomics and to display the protein occupancy on mRNA transcripts by next-generation sequencing. Application to a human embryonic kidney cell line identified close to 800 proteins. To our knowledge, nearly one-third were not previously annotated as RNA binding, and about 15% were not predictable by computational methods to interact with RNA. Protein occupancy profiling provides a transcriptome-wide catalog of potential cis-regulatory regions on mammalian mRNAs and showed that large stretches in 3' UTRs can be contacted by the mRNA-bound proteome, with numerous putative binding sites in regions harboring disease-associated nucleotide polymorphisms. Our observations indicate the presence of a large number of mRNA binders with diverse molecular functions participating in combinatorial posttranscriptional gene-expression networks.

Several attempts have been made to systematically map protein-protein interaction, or 'interactome', networks. However, it remains difficult to assess the quality and coverage of existing data sets. Here we describe a framework that uses an empirically-based approach to rigorously dissect quality parameters of currently available human interactome maps. Our results indicate that high-throughput yeast two-hybrid (HT-Y2H) interactions for human proteins are more precise than literature-curated interactions supported by a single publication, suggesting that HT-Y2H is suitable to map a significant portion of the human interactome. We estimate that the human interactome contains approximately 130,000 binary interactions, most of which remain to be mapped. Similar to estimates of DNA sequence data quality and genome size early in the Human Genome Project, estimates of protein interaction data quality and interactome size are crucial to establish the magnitude of the task of comprehensive human interactome mapping and to elucidate a path toward this goal.

Systematic mapping of protein-protein interactions, or 'interactome' mapping, was initiated in model organisms, starting with defined biological processes and then expanding to the scale of the proteome. Although far from complete, such maps have revealed global topological and dynamic features of interactome networks that relate to known biological properties, suggesting that a human interactome map will provide insight into development and disease mechanisms at a systems level. Here we describe an initial version of a proteome-scale map of human binary protein-protein interactions. Using a stringent, high-throughput yeast two-hybrid system, we tested pairwise interactions among the products of approximately 8,100 currently available Gateway-cloned open reading frames and detected approximately 2,800 interactions. This data set, called CCSB-HI1, has a verification rate of approximately 78% as revealed by an independent co-affinity purification assay, and correlates significantly with other biological attributes. The CCSB-HI1 data set increases by approximately 70% the set of available binary interactions within the tested space and reveals more than 300 new connections to over 100 disease-associated proteins. This work represents an important step towards a systematic and comprehensive human interactome project.

Human recombinant ribosomal protein S26 (rpS26) was shown to interact with its pre-mRNA intron I and mRNA fragment. Endogenous rpS26 in HeLa nuclear extract was also found to bind to the intron I, and with a lower extent to the mRNA fragment. The addition of recombinant rpS26 to the nuclear extract increased the binding largely. The in vitro splicing of an RNA that contained exon I, intron I and part of exon II of the rpS26 pre-mRNA yielded conventional and alternative mRNAs. Recombinant rpS26 was found to suppress the formation of both mRNAs. Sites of the pre-mRNA involved in the binding to rpS26 were detected by toe-printing. Nucleotides that caused a stop (pause) of the reverse transcription formed two clusters on the RNA secondary structure. One cluster including A69, A287 and A303 arranged the conventional 3' site of splicing, another one including A131, A136, G156, A166 and A264 arranged the alternative 3' site of splicing.

The cellular metabolic process in which a protein is formed, using the sequence of a mature mRNA molecule to specify the sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide chain. Translation is mediated by the ribosome, and begins with the formation of a ternary complex between aminoacylated initiator methionine tRNA, GTP, and initiation factor 2, which subsequently associates with the small subunit of the ribosome and an mRNA. Translation ends with the release of a polypeptide chain from the ribosome.

Hepatitis C virus uses an internal ribosome entry site (IRES) in the viral RNA to directly recruit human 40S ribosome subunits during cap-independent translation initiation. Although IRES-mediated translation initiation is not subject to many of the regulatory mechanisms that control cap-dependent translation initiation, it is unknown whether other noncanonical protein factors are involved in this process. Thus, a global protein composition analysis of native and IRES-bound 40S ribosomal complexes has been conducted to facilitate an understanding of the IRES ribosome recruitment mechanism. A combined top-down and bottom-up mass spectrometry approach was used to identify both the proteins and their posttranslational modifications (PTMs) in the native 40S subunit and the IRES recruited translation initiation complex. Thirty-one out of a possible 32 ribosomal proteins were identified by combining top-down and bottom-up mass spectrometry techniques. Proteins were found to contain PTMs, including loss of methionine, acetylation, methylation, and disulfide bond formation. In addition to the 40S ribosomal proteins, RACK1 was consistently identified in the 40S fraction, indicating that this protein is associated with the 40S subunit. Similar methodology was then applied to the hepatitis C virus IRES-bound 40S complex. Two 40S ribosomal proteins, RS25 and RS29, were found to contain different PTMs than those in the native 40S subunit. In addition, RACK1, eukaryotic initiation factor 3 proteins and nucleolin were identified in the IRES-mediated translation initiation complex.

Reverse-phase HPLC was used to fractionate 40S ribosomal proteins from human placenta. Application of a C4 reverse-phase column allowed us to obtain 27 well-resolved peaks. The protein composition of each chromatographic fraction was established by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and N-terminal sequencing. N-terminally blocked proteins were cleaved with endoproteinase Lys-C, and suitable peptides were sequenced. All sequences were compared with those of ribosomal proteins available from data bases. This allowed us to identify all proteins from the 40S human ribosomal subunit in the HPLC elution profile. By matrix-assisted laser-desorption ionization mass spectrometry the masses of the 40S proteins were determined and checked for the presence of post-translational modifications. For several proteins differences to the deduced sequences and the calculated masses were found to be due to post-translational modifications.

Keywords

Proteins conjugated with ribonucleic acid (RNA). Ribonucleoprotein are involved in a wide range of cellular processes. Besides ribosomes, in eukaryotic cells both initial RNA transcripts in the nucleus (hnRNA) and cytoplasmic mRNAs exist as complexes with specific sets of proteins. Processing (splicing) of the former is carried out by small nuclear RNPs (snRNPs). Other examples are the signal recognition particle responsible for targetting proteins to endoplasmic reticulum and a complex involved in termination of transcription.

Protein of the ribosome, large ribonucleoprotein particles where the translation of messenger RNA (mRNA) into protein occurs. They are both free in the cytoplasm and attached to membranes of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. Ribosomes are also present in all plastids and mitochondria, where they translate organelle-encoded mRNA.

Protein which is part of a reference proteome. Reference proteomes are a subset of proteomes that have been selected either manually or algorithmically according to a number of criteria to provide a broad coverage of the tree of life and a representative cross-section of the taxonomic diversity found within UniProtKB, as well as the proteomes of well-studied model organisms and other species of interest for biomedical research.